


out of the woods

by encroix



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-02-22
Packaged: 2018-03-14 10:37:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3407519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/encroix/pseuds/encroix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A girl wanders into the woods, and is led off the path by a wolf who devours her.</p><p>A girl wanders into the woods. A girl falls off the path. A girl finds a wolf.</p><p>This is not the same story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	out of the woods

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magisterequitum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/gifts).



> There is very light use of the _sex pollen_ trope in here, but it isn't actually key to the sex that they have so I thought including the tag would be misleading. It's more a plot device than anything.
> 
> There's very light Russian in here, which I got through some fair Googling, so any mistakes there are mine. Translations are in the end notes and not in-text as they're not necessary for understanding the piece.

 

 

 

_Tell me again the story about the wolves._

\-- _Again?_

_Again._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She is named after a planet. After a dead father. In the tongue of a land she no longer belongs to.

Tossed on the frothing waves of a sea like a piece of detritus, like a fragment of shooting star, Юпитер Максимилиановна Джонс -- soon to be just Jupiter Jones for most everyone who knows her, except her mama and Aunt Nina when they're angry. She enters the pages of her own story for the first time with a name that belongs in old folktales or in movies, and a chip on her shoulder, and seven thousand reminders why neither of those things suit her (Immigration, for one; cleaning toilets, for another; her lack of a future, and so on, and so on) but it doesn't seem to matter.

She is born and raised towards the stars, and the stars rise to meet her in turn.

Jupiter ascending, her aunt Nina reminds her over and over, as if this should seem very important to her. (It doesn't.)

She is too much her mother's child, raised on a sour milk of poverty, patterns of disappointment, and realism gained from years of hardened experience (from her mother's knowledge, anyway; she is still too young to know for herself the hardness or bitterness of the truths by themselves). Aunt Nina clucks her tongue, speaking of fate in the old ways, as if their lives are ever going to be anything better than they are now.

Jupiter's mother knows better.

 _Jupiter_ knows better.

Girls who win their names when their fathers are murdered are most certainly not the ones born under lucky stars.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_The girl wore a red cap, and was on her way to visit her grandmother._

_This is how all such stories start -- you believe that you are returning to a familiar place, that you know the path, and find that you have wandered too deep into the forest for your courage and your knowledge to lead you back out again._

_\--So what happens?_

_The girl was lost._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She grows up with polarities, her aunt Nina and mama seeing the world in black and in white and never meeting in the middle:

For her aunt Nina, there are always love stories to be told over the day's dull chores -- knitting a scarf or preparing dinner or as they're cleaning -- all Russian in their own way, filled with twists of selfishness and despair and almost always tragic, but not without love. After all, in the desolation of the Russian winter and the wild, what else can be expected to warm them enough to get them through this day into the next?

Only love.

 _And vodka_ , Mama always notes with a wry twist of the mouth.

For her mother, love can be talked about only in its particular language of pain, the only way women wounded by it know how to talk about it, as if it were a twist of a knife within the ribs, as if it could be something one prepared for like compiling a grocery list--

Jupiter follows her mother, as she has always done.

She has nothing to prove otherwise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like every other girl, this holds true only until she finds an exception to the rule.

She is fifteen.

The boy is in her science class, speaks English, drives a Volkswagen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(It ends up being nothing more than what her mother said -- hormones and biological impulses, neurons and chemical reactions -- but she believed it to be honest.

His name she no longer remembers.

But what he looked like -- his dark hair slicked back, carrying the weight of years he hadn't yet lived on his slender frame, flirtation and charm thick like honey against his lips, with his very own trademark, one of those retro leather jackets that had been in style then.

He invited her to junior prom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As it always happens, the theater of love ended up being the backseat of his car, a smuggled bottle of vodka the only other object bearing witness to what happened.

His hands had seemed large and boorish to her then, damp with sweat as he wielded them with all the finesse and grace of a sledgehammer, pawing at her breasts through the bust of her dress -- her very pretty dress that Aunt Nina and mama had rescued from a thrift shop and spent three weeks fixing and tailoring for her -- his mouth hot against her shoulder.

She had leaned back and let it happen, thinking of nothing other than the fact that his hands were very wet and his mouth seemed to be so too.

Not that he knew what to do with it. Any of it.

There were shots poured and downed -- three for each of them -- and, with a grin about what was to come, he chuckled against her mouth as he shoved her skirt up towards her hips. The seats of the car had been firm and uncomfortable as he laid her down against it, her head pressing against the edge of the window.

She closed her eyes, spread her legs, and prayed that it wouldn't hurt.

She can't even remember if it did hurt or not. If there was blood or not.

All she remembers is him managing to push his way inside of her, thrusting at her awkwardly for what felt like two hours but was probably closer to two minutes before turning with a frown towards the front of the car, vomiting the vodka and part of his dinner against the front steering column.

She had taken the opportunity to push him off of her, reaching to pull up her panties and fumbling for the handle of the door before he realized what was happening.

She took the bottle of vodka with her.

A happy souvenir of their time together.

Her mother came to pick her up an hour later, and she spent the rest of the night in the living room with her mother, her aunt, and her cousin Vlad, polishing off the vodka and dancing to outdated pop music piping from the radio.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aunt Nina chops onions idly by the stove, her eyes tearing, turning the knife in her hand to point authoritatively in her direction.

"Don't listen to your mother, мой солнышко," Aunt Nina says, sniffling. "You're a _Leo_. And for the lion, there can be nothing but great love. They accept nothing less."

Her mother sniffs dismissively from where she's sitting and peeling potatoes by hand. "Don't lie to her."

" _You_ don't lie to her."

She clicks her tongue against her teeth. "Thanks, Aunt Nina, but I'll believe it when I see it."

Her mother shrugs, slightly smiling. Another potato peel falls to join the others on the table.

"You listen to me, Jupiter," Aunt Nina says. "Just _no Capricorns_. They're no good for you."

She reaches for a potato and a knife.

"Sure, Aunt Nina," she says. "No Capricorns."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_\--So then what happened?_

_Jupiter, will you let me tell the story?_

_\--I_ am! _I_ am!

_The wolf had eyes as big as saucers, yellow as burning oil in the night, and the girl looked into its face, but did not see him, and was not afraid of him._

_\--How could she not notice that it was a wolf?_

_Sometimes the wolves appear to us as other things. Sometimes what is a wolf to another is not a wolf to us._

_\--You're not making any sense._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She meets Caine.

(Or,

Caine finds her.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 _You don't understand_ , he tells her , and she nods because she does, she _does_ understand, or maybe she doesn't, but it doesn't matter now when she's here with him, when she can see how much he wants to kiss her just as much as she wants to let him kiss her, when they're the only allies they have right now and she's apparently swimming in a whole new world where she's a queen of some kind and he's her, what, guard?

It's like right out of one of her Aunt Nina's stories: the hero appears to the heroine like a dream, half-imagined and soft around the edges and still fully formed somehow, and doesn't know anything else besides his commitment to the mission. The mission is the girl; the girl is the mission; the endings are always the same. A smile, a kiss, a marriage.

His expression betrays nothing, the mouth held humorlessly even if the eyes are sparking with the reply he's choosing not to express.

All she recalls is the strength of his arms as he'd carried her, the rest of it lost in the bitterness of the adrenaline on her tongue and the blur of a hospital room, of a city.

 _I have more in common with a dog than I do with you_.

(She remembers flying over the city, the adrenaline sharp in her mouth as she prayed that she wouldn't die, as his muscles somehow managed to keep her tethered to him just enough to keep her alive.

She doesn't remember much of anything else.)

But, she wants to say, how can that be when she's seen just how human he's capable of being? How he treated her when they were leaving the clinic, how he spoke to Kiza, how he keeps trying to make up for whatever it is that he's done to Stinger -- all of those things are human, which means that he must be. Or isn't that how the logic works?

Maybe it doesn't work that way, and maybe everything that she's feeling is exactly as her mother once told her -- instincts and chemicals, neurons in her head telling her that she feels attraction because she has a biological imperative to feel attraction -- but none of that seems honest. Not when she can see his eyes, full of warmth, and his mouth so close to hers and the heat radiating off of his body in waves.

It's like the first time her mother took her out to look at the stars and showed her pictures and maps, these taken from satellites, these through telescopes, these mapped and charted, and these are the ones called stars and these planets, these ones collapse and these ones consume. The last thing her mother had shared with her was how stars grew and grew and grew until they burst or otherwise were doomed to stay in their own orbits, locked into whatever it was they had become.

The Earth, third in its position in a system that circled something large and warm, as children do to a mother.

She feels like that now -- a little girl looking at the stars and feeling lost -- that sense of scope and confusion, knowing all of the things that she is and isn't, does and doesn't do, seeing all of the possibilities and impossibilities laid out before her.

This is how small you are; this is how fragile you are; this is your place in the scheme of things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(There are other places, he tells her. Other planets. Other worlds.

Her head buzzes with the noise of bees that float around her, their touch delicate as they hover around her skin. Never touching, never stinging.

She's a queen, the bees say, the others say.

Heir to something more than a lifetime of cleaning toilets and dodging the feds, more than soil and polluted air.

The stars, as always, somehow her birthright.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is the first time she questions her mother's logic.

After all, the more she thinks about it, the more time she spends with him -- with Caine -- she realizes that none of the usual explanations seem to fit.

How can this feeling be locked inside her head when she somehow feels like she's fallen into the ocean, and found it warm and inviting and terrifying? Her head swims with the largeness of it all around her, desire and warmth and companionship and _desire_ running through her head constantly like an alarm ringing _._

It doesn't make sense.

The feeling is too large, too palpable for it to be the product of a series of chain reactions. How can it be when she feels herself grow nervous around him, when her heart speeds up and her breath grows shallow and her head runs through a thousand different scenarios?

Bodies must have order, and this is nothing but chaos.

Her Aunt Nina's explanation, too, incomplete somehow, as if this feeling could be explained by nothing but design, by three old women with their threads --

None of it seems to fit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe it's enough that she looks at him and sees something she wants to choose.

Maybe it's enough that she feels like she wants to make that choice.

 

(To clarify:

she isn't in love with him. She doesn't know if she is.

But, for once, it becomes possible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even the word itself is incomplete -- _love_ , the tongue striking the soft palate with too gentle a touch, the single syllable unable to encompass the swath of everything that the definition could hold:

 _love is patient, love is kind_ , she remembers hearing someone recite, and maybe it is, maybe that's true, but it is also all of the other things: petty and impatient as her mother at a doctor's appointment, scrutinizing like selecting fruit at the grocer's, cold and needy, greedy and desperate and wanting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_влюбился как мышь в коров ввалился._

More like a maze, a trap, a loss and a gain all at once.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_The wolf tricked the girl. He swallowed up her grandmother and dressed into her clothes, climbing into the bed, which was still warm, and waited for the girl to find him._

_\--Couldn't she see that he was a wolf?_

_The girl saw what she wanted to see. Her grandmother, tiny and frail and sick, laid up in bed from the harsh cold that seeped under the cracks in the door and the howling wind that made the glass in the windows rattle._

_\--But a wolf has fur!_

_The girl saw what she wanted to see._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She becomes as brazen as a girl lost in the woods.

Bares her throat to him and asks to have it ripped out.

 _Prove me wrong_ , she thinks, the way all girls in the forest do. _Show me what kind of monster you are_.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He growls, a gentle, menacing sound full of promise that makes her shiver, his jaw tensing as he draws himself away from her and leaves.

Not before revealing himself.

Not before letting her know just what he would and wouldn't do.

She's seen him now, and that's what matters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(After all, it's seeing the monster in the light of day that wins the battle. Not the struggle over morals, not the razor edge of an axe, not the noise of flesh and bone being hewn apart.

It's looking the beast in its eyes and seeing its soul, learning its darkness to decipher what light would destroy it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

She sees his face, and knows what choice it is she would make.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe she could let herself be in love with him.

Maybe that's something she chooses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In her head, she hears the knowing tone of her Aunt Nina, presenting riddles with no answer.

_but is a wolf the trap for the girl, or is the girl the trap for the wolf?_

Maybe both, she thinks.

Maybe neither.

Maybe they are the only ones who know how to set each other free.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A choice is not always a good thing; she learns this at twelve.

Dragged with her mother and aunt to see the Mariinsky, in town for a three-night stopover on their tour, Mama and Nina save their spare dollars for months to buy tickets for the three of them. Лебединое озеро. Lakes of swans.

The weeks beforehand are spent with Mama and Nina constantly talking about it. It's a rare point of pride for her to get to see them so excited about something. Usually the only thing that gets them to tick above their usual daily apathy is anger, so their soft enthusiasm and light joy is more than a nice surprise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The dances are the same, but the meaning entirely different than the ones she remembers.

The swans aren't swans, but a metaphor. A test.

Aunt Nina says, _Siegfried had to make a choice of the two choices that the sorcerer set before him, and he chose incorrectly._

Mama says, _Men are foolish that way. Always thinking with their dicks instead of their heads._

Aunt Nina laughs at this, a braying noise. _You won't know about that yet,_ _м_ _ой_ _с_ _олнышко_ _, but you'll learn._

Mama's hand is a comfortable weight on top of her head.

 _Couldn't he have chosen the right girl in the end?_ she says, and her mother and Aunt Nina share a look.

 _His heart wasn't... true enough to know which girl was real until it was too late_ , her mother says.

_But if it had been, he would have picked the right one?_

Mama and Aunt Nina pull her by the hands towards the direction of the train stop.

_His heart was never going to be true enough to make the right choice. He wanted too many things, and his greed led him to choose the thing that would cost him everything._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She looks into his eyes, nearly golden in the light, his wings a soft touch against the skin of her shoulders.

It's freezing up here, so high above the city, but she wouldn't trade the feeling of flying for anything else. By the answering smile on his face, she knows that he understands.

"What are you thinking about?" she whispers against his mouth.

His hand braces against the small of her back. "How good it is to see you," he says.

She snorts, her hand knocking against his arm. "Caine--"

He interrupts her with another kiss, his mouth warm and sweet over hers, his thumb tracing along the line of her jaw as his tongue works gently against her own.

"I've taken a temporary position with the Aegis," he murmurs as he pulls away. "I don't know when they're going to call me."

She blinks at him. "Am I still going to see you?"

The corner of his mouth tics with amusement. "Yes," he says. "When I can. When I have leave, or..."

"I feel like I just found you," she says, as his mouth grazes lightly against her forehead. "I want to get to know you." To emphasize the point, she leans in to press a kiss against the hollow of his throat, the hard jut of his adam's apple.

"Your Majesty," he murmurs.

"What?" she says, a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth.

He hums, licking his lips as he tries to find the words. Her hand moves along his arm towards his bicep, his shoulder, before settling at the base of his neck, her fingers brushing against his hairline.

"I want to get to know you too," he says, his smile soft and almost shy.

She leans in for another kiss, and he leans away.

"I just don't want to hurt you," he says.

She shakes her head firmly. "You won't."

His wings rustle as he frowns. "I tore a man's throat out, and I didn't know why I did it. For the longest time."

She softens. "You aren't that person anymore."

"You don't know that," he says.

"I do," she says. "I know _you_."

He looks down towards the city, quiet for a long while.

"Caine?" she says.

He meets her gaze.

"I trust you."

His lips press into a thin line as he thinks. The muscles beneath her hands grow taut with tension. "I should take you back down," he says.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 _The girl drew near the bed, peering into the wolf's face. She still believed that it was her grandmother, and asked,_ Grandmother, why are your eyes so large? _And the wolf replied to her,_ the better to see you with. _And the girl thought about this answer for a moment, trying to reason whether or not it was strange enough for her to doubt words she had always accepted as being truthful._

_\--Did she believe him?_

_She believed him._

_\--Why?_

_Because he had raised his voice to sound like her grandmother, and because she trusted her grandmother and believed her. Anything can be believed if it's said sweetly enough._

_\--I say nice things to you and Mama all the time, and I don't get everything that I want._

_That's because you haven't found the right kind of sweetness, Jupiter._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He's called out to the Aegis.

She doesn't see him for weeks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Occasionally she finds small gifts left in her mailbox (" _From the boy_?" Nina always croons as she opens the unmarked packages. " _Keep a man who remembers to give you things without asking, Jupiter."_ ), things he's managed to pick up on his tours around the universe. Without his explanations, all she knows about them is what she can manage to puzzle out: there are small translucent stones that look like pebbles of sand, an ornate hand-painted box with secret latches and levers that keep hidden things hidden, pieces of art, a compass.

She keeps the items lined up on the table by her bed, examining them each as she lies there, trying to fall asleep.

Sometimes she thinks (she imagines) she can smell his scent clinging to them still, that mix of tobacco, leather, pine, and just _him_ still hanging in the air.

It's the only thing that can make her feel closer to him during these stretches. The only thing that reminds her that he's been to see her, that he'll return to see her.

The only thing that helps in those moments when she remembers how many (very literal) worlds away he must be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It happens by accident.

It's Vladi's next get-rich-quick-or-lose-money-trying scheme, something he's picked up from the girls that work his favorite blintz place. He comes home, arms laden with dress boxes, and drops them all in an enormous pile in his bedroom, waving furiously at her to follow him.

"You won't believe it," he says, and she shakes her head because no, she probably won't, "but I found out about this thing that the girls have going, and Jupiter, it'll be the easiest money we ever made." He waves his hand, "Aside from the egg donating thing which didn't pan out..."

"The point, Vlad," she says.

He pulls off the lid of one of the dress boxes with great fanfare, throwing it behind him to join the myriad other pieces of garbage lingering on his bedroom floor (pizza boxes, empty soda bottles, video game cases, dirty laundry). "Take a look," he says. "These babies are gen-u-ine knockoffs, the closest you can get to the real thing and tons better than whatever it is that they've got on the street. We can hock these on eBay and make a _killing_."

She lifts the dress out of the box, and frowns. It's one of those numbers that belongs on the Russian socialites she's always seeing around town, looking like they've still got one foot in 1985, all tight plasticky looking (and feeling) fabric with cutouts, the hem riding extremely short. "This looks like a space outfit."

Vlad thumbs at his nose, sniffing indignantly. "What are you talking about?"

She waves her hand. "You know, like _Star Trek_? You know what? It doesn't matter. No one's going to believe this is a" -- she checks the label -- "real Versace, Vlad, are you _kidding_ me?"

His mouth twitches nervously. "No, no, it's a done deal, it's a done deal, you just got to put it on and we'll take pictures and sell them online. It's _guaranteed_."

She lifts the dress distastefully. "I'm not wearing this."

"Oh, come on," he says. "Slap one of those big fur coats on you and you'll look just like _money_."

She shoots him a look. "How much did you drop on this little investment?"

He waves his hand. "What's a little money when it comes to doing business?"

"It's a lot when you don't have any," she says. "How much?"

"I got one of those fur coats off of Kostya," he says, stalling as he heads out into the hallway, "who has the place on Third? It's a little smelly -- I think it got a little wet -- but it looks good. It looks good, and it'll make the pictures look good."

He runs down the hall to another stack of bags at the end of the hall, fishing through it.

"Put the dress on, Jupiter!"

She groans. "I'm going to _kill_ you."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's worse than she expects.

The dress is clingy, all right, so tight that she can barely manage to breathe, and so short that she feels like she'll accidentally flash someone if she sits down. The fur coat doesn't make anything better, and coupled with the fact that she hasn't had a chance to shower yet today --

"Vlad, I look like a heroin addict."

He clicks off another picture, the flash bright in her face. "You do not."

The coat smells like mildew and wet animal and it hangs off of her, three sizes too big, over a dress that's clearly sized for a double zero. Her thighs push against the fabric and she can feel the circulation in her legs going. The cutouts along her bust, sides, and back are all enormous and wherever the dress is loose enough to let her blood flow enough that she can feel anything, it's just cold.

"You know what you need?" Vlad says.

Yes, she does know what she needs.

A shot of vodka, to start.

A cousin with a better sense for logic and business wouldn't hurt either.

"Just take the damn pictures so I can get this thing off, would you?"

"Heels!" Vlad shouts, grinning. "Go get some heels on and we'll really make this look like the real deal."

She shakes her head. "I'm doing this as a favor, Vlad. Just take the pictures and let me take this damn thing off."

He lifts the camera. "Jupes, there's like...eighteen more dresses."

She groans. "Then hurry up, because I'm not doing this all day."

He snaps the flash a few more times, winking at her and giving her the thumb's up after each click.

"I'm going to kill you," she says.

"Just think of all the cash we're going to make and you can kill me later."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's when they're in-between rolls of film that there's a tap on the window.

Vlad, the excellent planner and organizer that he is, ran out of film halfway through their stack of dresses, leaving her here as he ran off to the store, and now she's sitting in a clubbing dress with a wet and used fur coat on, checking her phone, praying her family doesn't come home, and occasionally threatening him in two languages under her breath.

When she runs to the window, she sees Caine instead, his wings quietly moving as he hovers by the house.

She pushes the window open, hissing, "Are you crazy? Someone's going to see you!"

He waves at her to step back, and she does as his wings drop him low enough to grip the pane of the window.

His boots are heavy as he clambers inside -- part of her can't believe that he can somehow fit inside their house, he seems so enormous -- and with a flick of a button she can't see, his prosthetic wings collapse and fold behind him until it's just _him._

She walks into his arms, wrapping her arms around him and squeezing. "I haven't seen you in so long," she says.

"I can't stay that long," he says. "I just wanted to see you."

"I can make that work," she says, kissing him. It's slow at first, though it builds quickly until her mouth is moving fast and demanding and urgent over his. His hands are warm as they slide along her skin underneath the coat, the pads of his fingers rough against the sensitive skin of her back.

She groans against his mouth as his hands slide along the side of her body down towards her hip.

"I want you," she says, pressing herself against him, and when she looks up at him, she nearly gasps. His eyes are nearly entirely dark, the pupils blown wide with desire, the irises still a dim gold.

She licks her lips.

"Jupiter," he says, trying to place space between them.

She doesn't let him.

"We have time," she says.

He shakes his head, his eyes flitting quickly around the room, over her body. She can just catch his quiet rumbling growl of appreciation as he appraises her dress.

She leans forward, reaching for his hand and drawing it towards her to fix against her thigh. "Caine," she says, and his jaw tics. "I want you to touch me."

He snatches his hand back, stepping to the side to pace a small length of the room. "Jup-- your Majesty," he corrects, stammering, "This isn't -- "

"What?" she says.

"This isn't how it's supposed to be. For you."

She wrinkles her brow as she looks at him. "What are you talking about?"

He clears his throat. "You and I are -- what's meant for you is..."

A pager around his belt beeps, and he nearly sags with relief.

"That's the Aegis," he says.

She wrinkles her brow, watching as he clambers back through the small window.

"I'll see you again soon. We're being called to Landau412, which isn't very far from here. It shouldn't be as long as last time."

"Caine," she says. "What did you mean before 'this isn't how it's supposed to be for me'?"

His eyes hold hers for a beat, but he doesn't say anything more. Instead, he steps out the window, dropping into the air, his wings opening and extending in a single motion as he hovers there in the air. She leans against the window, her head poking out to watch him.

"Whatever it is that you're thinking," she says, trying to think of the right thing to say.

"I'll see you again soon," he interrupts, flying close enough to drop a quick kiss against her cheek.

And then, nothing more than the sight and noise of his wings working against the air as he disappears towards the sky.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_The wolf had a very pointed, crooked face, like a trickster. But the eyes were kind. That's where the girl was confused. For with kind eyes, everything seems possible._

_\--And what happened to the girl?_

_The girl looked into the face of the wolf and what do you think she saw there?_

_\--I don't know._

_The danger of the wolf is not that it bares its teeth at you right away, but that it waits until the worst possible moment to show you that it has teeth. So that by the time you realize what kind of danger you're facing, it's too late to escape._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her mother warns her about distance.

This her aunt doesn't have an antidote against either -- _space is the kind of thing that can ruin even fated loves, Jupiter_ , she says. _you need to be careful. keep a - how do you say? - tight grip?_

Her mother clicks her tongue. _You can't make anyone stay if they don't want to stay, Jupiter. Space just reminds people how easy it is to leave._

And always, there, in the back of her mind, the reminders from years and years past that love is nothing more than an illusion, a deception.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She wonders if he thinks about her.

She wonders if, in the blackness of space, he remembers that he has someone.

That he has _her_.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(And in the cramped busy cloud of her daily life, all she does is think of him.

Imagines his quiet presence, his stillness, his easy calm. All of it a weighty thing in the air, in the room. Something she never seems to have in the noise of her house, the noise of the city, the frantic hum of her life.

Caine only seems to make noise the way skipping stones break the surface of water, with a light touch and only with the greatest reservation. Otherwise he leaves everything to its own quiet depths, to its own thoughts.

She can barely breathe here in the house, can barely think when she's up to her elbows in dirty dishes and leaking trash.

There are always demands here, from the world, from her family, from the clients ( _Jupiter, wear the dresses, would you? Jupiter, wash the dishes. Jupiter, have you scrubbed the third floor bathrooms yet?_ ) and he hasn't made any on her (yet).

For him, it seems to be enough to attend the journey alongside her. To let her make her own decisions, her own choices.

 

 

 

 

 

From the beginning, he has always given her a choice.

From the moment he laid the gun down beside her unconscious body and waited for her to wake up.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next time he's back from the Aegis, she takes him to the Sears Tower after hours.

The lights of the city keep the observation roof from being completely dark, and they spend the time walking in silence around its perimeter, looking out at the silhouette of the city against the sky. He hasn't spoken much since he's been back, but she's taken care to ask the right kinds of questions ( _did he enjoy the places he went? were they places he'd been before? has he been to see stinger and kiza?_ )

He's answered them all as cautiously and friendly as he can manage, his body still consciously placing distance between the two of them, their hands barely grazing as they talked. About the Aegis. About Stinger and Kiza. About her family.

"I want you to meet them one day," she says, and his startle is enough to make the corner of his mouth twitch. A serious enough response for him. "If that's something that you're okay with."

His hand comes up to rub at his ears.

"Hey," she says, touching her hand to his wrist. "We'll give you a hat. It'll be fine."

He snorts.

"No," she says. "I mean it. We can talk about it later, but I want you to meet them. I've been seeing you for long enough now that they're starting to ask questions on their own anyway."

He murmurs something she can't catch, and they keep walking in circles.

"You're avoiding me," she says.

His wings ruffle with indignation. "I haven't been avoiding you."

She waves at the space between them. "You're avoiding me."

His eyes fall half-closed. "What, just because I'm not touching you?"

She swallows. "Yes."

"I don't need to touch you," he says. "You're not very quiet."

She looks up at him from beneath her lashes. "Do you like it when I'm not quiet?"

He swallows, his eyes flicking to look at the sky behind her. "Jupiter."

She shrugs, aiming for casual. "I'm just saying," she says. "I think it's important to talk about these kinds of things."

"What?" he says, rubbing at his eyes with his hand. "What you were talking about before?"

"Not touching me?" she repeats. "Yes."

He scoffs. "You think that that's the only way I can connect with you?"

She takes his hand. "It's the way that I _like_ to connect with you."

"I told you," he says, his fingers curling slightly around hers, "It's not the only way. You make a lot of noise. And _not_ like the way you're thinking."

She chuckles. "My way is more fun."

He gives a soft laugh. "Maybe."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 _Now the wolf had explained his large eyes, but the little girl was still very sharp, and she noticed the point and size of his ears._ Why, Grandma _, she said,_ I hadn't noticed your ears being so big before!

_\--That's not very nice of her._

_Shh, now, the wolf leaned close and said very softly,_ the better to hear you with, _because there is nothing that will entrap a woman faster. Are you listening, Jupiter? And the wolf whispered his answer so that she would have to lean closer to hear him, because he had caught many other girls in the same way before and knew just what to do and how to talk to them._

_\--She could still run, couldn't she?_

_You haven't been listening. She_ could _have run if she wanted to, but she didn't want to._

\-- _Why not?_

_The wolf made it too interesting for her to leave then. He said the things that would make her curious enough to resist listening to her heart, to resist running, even when that was the safest thing she could have done._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The door to the roof clicks as the latch works from the inside, and he moves on instinct, reaching for her and wrapping an arm around her waist as he shoots up into the air.

She'll never get used to it - the suddenness of flight, the chill of the air as she speeds up into its heights, the rush of adrenaline as her body leaves the solid ground that it's so familiar with. His arms tighten around her waist almost painfully, holding her against him as they hover several yards away from the roof.

A night patrolman doing his regular rounds.

"Are you all right?" he says.

She bites her lip, resisting the impulse to look down and see her own feet dangling miles above anything that could catch her.

"I wouldn't let you fall," he says.

She nods vacantly, watching as the beam of light from the security guard's flashlight cuts in broad patterns through the dark.

Her hands lock around his back and she leans her head against his chest, willing her breathing to stay slow and deep. A panic attack at this height would probably not be good for anyone. And after so many weeks of being away from him, unable to touch him or see him, she finds his presence more comforting than she expected. It's solid. Supporting.

She closes her eyes and just breathes him in.

"Hey," he says.

She leans her face up to press a soft kiss against him.

"Talk to me," she says, daring a quick glance down. "What did you mean before?"

There's the loud noise of the door as it clicks back into its latch, and his wings extend to slowly lower them back down onto the roof.

"People aren't very quiet animals," he says, shrugging. "I can hear you sometimes. Your heart beating in your chest, how quickly you're breathing -- just...small things."

"You can hear my heart beating?" she says. Their feet touch down on the surface of the roof, and she releases a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

His answering smile is small. "You're still afraid of the sky. Of flying."

She sniffs. "It's a little hard to get used to when I don't have control over it," she says. "It's different with the boots."

She reaches for his hands with her own, drawing them towards his sides as she strides towards him, pressing herself up against him.

"So what are you hearing now?"

His hand slips up towards her shoulder, the pad of his thumb brushing against the juncture of her neck and shoulder. "I can hear your pulse," he says, "so quick underneath your skin."

Her breath catches in her throat. "And what does that tell you?"

He leans in and presses a kiss against her pulse point, sucking gently, and she sighs, her head tilting back to give him access. Trailing kisses up her neck, his nose brushes against her as he ends with a kiss against her jawline.

When he pulls away, his face is guarded, meeting hers with a careful casualness.

"Caine," she says, "what do you hear now?"

Her heart seems to be pounding almost painfully in her chest now, her skin warm and flushed, as she grows slick between her thighs.

She's missed him so much.

She leans her weight against him, feeling him half-hard against her leg, shuddering as she tries to grind her hips against him. His hands settle against her shoulders, pushing at her gently.

"What's wrong?" she says, cupping his face in her hands and kissing him directly. "You're not going to make me ask, are you?"

His eyes grow hooded and dark once she says it, and she licks her lips, filing that particular note away for later, but his hands stay where they are.

"You don't know what it is you're asking."

"Yes," she says. "I --"

"No," he interrupts. "You -- You're the queen, Jup -- your Majesty -- and there's so many more planets out there than you've seen. Than you've gotten a chance to see. So many more ruling families, so many more people who can give you things that I can't."

She shakes her head. "I don't want whatever it is that you think that they can give me. I want _you_."

"How can you be sure," he begins, "if you haven't seen everything that's out there, just waiting for you? There are people who can give you things that you _deserve_. People who can meet you at your position and... I don't know... give you more."

She cups his face with her hand. "Listen to me," she says. "I don't want more."

"Your Majesty," he says.

"No," she says. "I know what I want, and I'm telling you that I'm choosing the thing that I want. And I want you."

"I'm a splice," he says. "And there is so much more out there in the universe that you can't even... wrap your head around right now. I'm not what's best for you. And you'll figure that out for yourself."

She kisses him. "You're _such_ an ass," she says.

She reaches for his hand, moving towards the edge of the path.

They walk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's around dawn when they stop walking, deciding to rest on the wooden chaises by the stairwell. "You aren't exactly quiet either, you know," she says. "When we're this close, when I talk to you or when I'm touching you or kissing you, sometimes I can hear you."

They lie beside each other, and she rolls onto her side, throwing a leg over his as her hands brush a line from his cheek to his neck.

His eyebrows raise, and her fingers draw small patterns against his neck, her thumbs running lightly in circles over the skin.

"You make this noise," she says, "like you're... growling at me. I have to tell you, it's kind of hot."

He colors.

"And I can hear it when your breathing changes," she says, leaning in to press a kiss against his jaw. His back and shoulders go rigid, and she smiles. Leaning in, she presses a kiss against his adam's apple, sucking lightly until she hears his quiet inhale. "Just like that."

His growl is low, and she rolls her hips, desperate for any kind of pressure.

"You aren't as good at hiding yourself as you'd like to think you are."

He turns them around, pinning her against the chaise with his hips, his arms bracing on either side of her. She gasps, tipping her head back as he meets her for a kiss. It's pure heat, the way his mouth descends on hers, hot and slick, his stubble scratching against her as she reaches for his hips to pull him even closer.

Her hips grind against his and he answers in kind, pressing her harder against the wood of the chaise, and she moans.

There, again -- his growl, low and dark.

"See?" she says.

He nips lightly at her jaw and she shudders.

"Let's go someplace," she whispers. "Find a room."

"Your Majesty," he says.

"Like _right now."_

He pulls away, his body heavy as it leans away from her, moving to stand. She throws her head back against the chaise and groans.

"You can't tell me that you honestly..."

He presses a kiss to the corner of her mouth. "I just want to take it slow," he says.

"You want to get left behind," she replies, sharply.

He doesn't answer.

She reaches for his hand, giving it a firm squeeze. "If you think that I'm just going to do that, then you don't know me at all."

He chuckles, his gaze falling on her mouth and lingering. "Whatever your Majesty says."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_I've brought you these treats, the girl said, but the wolf, who she still believed was her grandma, answered her: you are the only treat I needed._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The question comes out one night when they're lying beside each other on the brick column of a building, watching the stars circle in the sky overhead.

She's exhausted from the three extra houses Uncle booked them for the day ( _"Is two penthouses, and one house," he had murmured in between bites of food. "Is like one and a half houses."_ ) and her head is floating somewhere between half-asleep and drunk, so she says, "Do you want me?"

He turns to face her, surprised. "Of course I want you," he says, quietly, reverently. "That's not what you have to worry about."

"No," she says. "That's the only question that matters."

He shakes his head. "It isn't."

"What else is there?"

His eyes flit back up to the sky. "Your safety," he says. "Your responsibilities. You did what you had to before to protect your people. Your home."

"You wouldn't be in the way of that," she says.

"Not now," he says, his hand settling on top of hers. "But not forever."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She gets it.

Really, she does.

He runs the way that she used to run -- terrified of his own shadow, of making a mark, the way that she used to be scared to leave; when there's so much counting on you to do one thing, it makes you start to challenge all of the other options that life has for you.

Stinger and Kiza try to be gentle with her.

_It's impossible for you to understand what it feels like to have been bred for a single reason. A single purpose. When everything falls apart, the only thing you can find to explain why is...yourself._

And the two of them are good learners. Fast ones.

He's become excellent at finding people the way that she's excelled at staying -- it's need become impulse, impulse become instinct, playing the parts they need to in order to fix the things that made them.

If only her father had kept his feet planted firmly in the ground, had never placed seeing the stars above seeing his only daughter.

If only Caine's pack had seen him as bigger than he was, stronger than he was. If only he hadn't been a monster. If only he'd been able to control himself.

And now that they've found each other, nothing seems to ring true in the same way.

Her feet are itching with a need to run, to escape, to see as much of the universe as possible and experience it for herself. After all, it is her home, her land, her _inheritance_ , and she wants to live it, breathe it, turn it inside out and know it the way she used to know her father's star maps.

And he's looking for nothing other than to remain planted, to keep her rooted where she has always been because it's the only way to guarantee anything about her safety. About her life. About the ways the rest of the story will play out.

She understands it. It's safe. But it isn't the only option. And she's tired of second-guessing herself and constantly looking behind her. She's tired of living life carefully, tired of treading lightly when all she wants to do is shout across the city, the world, that she's here, that she _did_ something that mattered, and that it makes her someone who matters.

At the end of the day, stories are named for their heroes, and not the other way around.

At the end of the day, if she stays here, in Chicago, living underground at her uncle's house, she's going to end up forgotten, just like the other thousands of illegal aliens in the city, just like the hundreds of thousands of people who left for a better life only to find themselves living a quieter one.

She never believed that she was meant for great things, but if she's fallen into it, then maybe she has a responsibility to see the story to its proper end. To claim her title, to own her birthright, to take the things that she knows she deserves.

Maybe he isn't good for her.

Maybe he's right.

But she refuses to let him go without even trying to see how it ends. Where it ends. If it even ends at all.

She's tired of running, just like she knows he must be tired of hunting. Sooner or later, the chase wears you down, exhaustion settling in the marrow of your bones to remind you that everything has a natural endpoint. Everything needs to rest, to find a home, to recover.

The only things that keep running are ghosts.

The only things that keep chasing are monsters.

Everything else has a place to belong to, a place to be kept.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

\-- _So what happened next?_

_The wolf swallowed her up in a single gulp._

_\--Just like that?_

_Just like that._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She doesn't see him for three months.

In the time between, her mind finds the questions it had always hoped to avoid, thoughts she had deliberately tried not to consider - _what if something happened on the Aegis? what if something happened to him and no one knew where to reach her or how to reach her, or cared to reach her? how would she find out? how would she know? -_ planning the same escape routes in her head over and over again.

It's the same panic she used to feel as a girl, waiting for the INS to beat down their doors, forcing them into detention and shipping them back to a strange place they would make her call home.

Inside her shared bedroom, inside her uncle's compact two-level house, inside the packed, densely populated city, she can't think of anything else but her own cage. There are no plans that can save her from the weight of a federal authority, of someone coming to remind her that the things she owns are never really the things she owns.

She is a guest. She is a stranger. Nothing she touches can be hers.

The only thing that helps to keep her calm is the sight of the stars through the small aperture of the telescope.

In the stars, there is sprawl. In the stars, there is more than enough space, more than enough resources, and she (now) has more than enough cash to make sure that they all live comfortably.

There is someplace where they could all be safe for the rest of their days. Her. Mama. Nina.

She would just have to explain it to them first, get past their initial responses of disbelief, shock, horror.

 

 

 

 

 

She could save them all. 

She just has to try.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_This story is different than the one I heard as a girl._

_\--Why is it different?_

_Your mama and I come from a different place, and so the story changed a little bit._

_\--A lot different?_

_There is still a girl. Still a wolf. The reasons why are different. The grandmother is the one who gives the girl the red cape because the land is broken, and she is poor, and there is nothing else for her to give. It is a sign of blood. A gift._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

His next visit is a surprise, his boots dropping heavily onto the ground beside her as she's walking through the city on her way to the bank.

"You're going to get yourself caught," she says.

He shakes his head, pulling the knitted cap she'd gifted him from one of his inside jacket pockets and pulling it down over his head. "I'm careful," he says. "You don't need to worry about me."

She reaches for his hand, squeezing it with her own. "There's something I wanted to talk to you about."

His hand slips out of hers, pressing against the small of her back as they continue walking. "Titus has asked to meet with you."

She stills, nearly tripping over the edge of the pavement, but his hand guides her. Keeps her moving, stumbling forward.

"I was thinking about asking you to tell him I wanted to see him," she says. "About my inheritance. The family. Everything."

"You can't trust him, your Majesty."

"What does he want?"

Caine shrugs. "Whatever it is," he says, "you can bet that it isn't going to be about your family."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's a dinner.

A state dinner, by the way he keeps talking about it.

"The Carophlax family is a very prominent one, and one we do much business with," Titus says, his words practically slurred in their smoothness. "You can understand their anxieties after our...refinery incident."

She hums. "Yeah," she says. "I can understand their being worried."

"You are, after all, the face of our company now, aren't you?" he says, his eyes sharp as they examine her. "Unless, of course, you'd be willing to turn any of that over to..."

She shakes her head. "I'll come to your dinner."

He smiles, looking as smug and self-satisfied as ever. "Good," he says. "I'll be interested to see how you conduct our family business."

She bites down hard against her tongue. "I'm sure I'll handle it just fine."

"I'll look forward to seeing you then," he says with another light smile. He heads towards her, leaning in to press a kiss against her cheek. "And let me take the opportunity to remind you before I forget that pets, however cherished, will not be welcome."

Outside the doors, she can hear the heavy rhythm of Caine's boots pause in their endless pacing.

"Good seeing you as always, Jupiter."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Carophlaxes, it turns out, are a family-species all on their own. They're average height, but willowy; in their thinness, their cheekbones jut high and sharp but the rest of them are polished down to an even smoothness, their skin a shimmery translucent silver-gray. They look distorted in the way that people do after their third round of collagen and are just on _that_ side of being plastic, and she has to bite her tongue to keep from shuddering when they lean forward and lick her cheek in greeting.

(Titus waves her forward to return the gesture, and she does it as quickly and gracefully as she can manage.)

There are three of them: a husband and wife, and their young, ailing daughter who looks like she'd rather be anyplace else. She tries to remember their names but around the twelfth syllable, she just tries to cling to the first few that she can recall.

There are silver goblets placed out in front of them all.

"We've brought you a gift," the father, Drantari-something, says, removing a tall glass bottle from his luggage. "The finest Amyartal that the Carophlax estate produces."

Titus simpers. "Of course."

The bottle is opened, a splash poured into each of their goblets along with a generous amount of fruit wine.

"What is it?" she whispers.

"It's similar to wine," Titus says. "It helps you to unwind, to really feel and experience whatever is happening around you. Their chief export, and the primary reason why they place such a sizeable order with us. They'd consider it an enormous affront if you abstained."

She eyes the bottle warily.

His eyes level with hers as he reaches for one of the goblets, raising it in toast. He says something in a language she can't understand, and the Carophlaxes grunt in kind.

They down the drinks in a single gulp.

She reaches for her own goblet.

 _What the hell_ , she thinks. She's nearly died at least a dozen times, so what's another to add to the list?

She's Russian, and her mother's daughter; a drink isn't going to be the thing that kills her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The moment it slides down her throat, she can feel its effects.

Her skin warms, becoming nearly pink with sudden heat. It isn't unpleasant, but more intense than she anticipated. And every sensation becomes heightened - she can hear out into the hallway, she can feel the hairs against her skin prickle against the temperature changes of the room, even feeling a few inches past her skin, the air around her warm and stimulating.

"How do you feel?" Titus whispers against the shell of her ear, and she can only manage a soft sigh in response.

"Fine," she says, as the Carophlax husband blinks seductively at her. "I feel fine."

Titus grins. "I thought you might," he says, reaching out to brush his fingertips against the skin of her neck.

She knows she should feel revulsion or want to turn away, but something about her wants nothing more than to be touched, than to keep feeling the warmth that seems to be burning its way right through her. His fingertips brush against her pulse, and she moans.

"What, did you drug me?" she says.

He blinks lazily, sighing in pleasure as he shifts towards the Carophlax wife and presses a kiss against her cheek. "Hardly," he answers. "You consented."

 _"_ I need to sit down," she says.

Titus's grin is wide. "Would you like me to lead you?"

She shakes her head, waving him away as she focuses her energies on moving towards the wall. Something which seems nearly impossible with her head and her body swamped in sensation. A soft breeze is blowing across the width of the room, carrying with it the scent of lavendar and the odd sand-salt that covers the planet's shores; the temperature in the room keeps shifting between balmy and cool; the Carophlaxes are clearly doing _something_ which has both of them issuing little noises every now and again; and Titus -- she doesn't even want to know what Titus is doing. Probably has his hand down his pants, watching the entire thing unfold.

She sinks down against the soft ottoman with a sigh, feeling the plush velvet brush softly against the backs of her thighs as she leans her back against the wall, counting her breaths in an attempt to maintain any kind of focus.

Another wave of heat hits her, burning its way against her sternum, and turning her to liquid.

God, she hasn't felt so much in _so long_ , and all of it right now seems to be pulsing right between her legs, anxious and eager for any kind of sensation.

 _"_ Jupiter?" Titus says.

In her head, she sees a flash of teeth. Hears her name said in a different way. In a different pitch.

She shifts against the seat, grinding her hips down against softness with a groan.

"Jupiter, would you like some more?"

 _More_ , she thinks, she says, _yes_.

She shakes her head as the room grows so warm - as she grows so warm - that it feels suffocating, that she has to peel off her cardigan and lie there in just the plain black dress she'd worn to the occasion.

Across the room, she thinks she can see the Carophlaxes stripping themselves of... something.

 _God_ , she thinks. _Fucking aliens._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Caine finally finds her, she has no idea how much time has passed or how indecent she looks - her hair pulled down from its ponytail, her dress plastered to her body from how much she's been sweating, her muscles tense from denying every single impulse she's had in the past several hours to start touching herself for any sort of relief.

Caine's ears twitch just the slightest amount and she bites down hard on the inside of her cheek to keep from reaching for them.

 _all the better to hear you with, my dear_.

She wonders if he can feel how warm it is, if he can tell how turned on she is, if he can smell it on her.

"I want to go home," she whispers, her voice rough.

He isn't listening. "You dosed her with Amyartal?" he says, his voice low.

She can feel the vibration of his voice across her entire body and she moans. "Please," she says. "Please don't say anything else."

Titus gives a low moaning laugh as one of the Carophlaxes licks along the hollow of his throat. "She was told of its effects," he says. "And she agreed that the cost to the business would be far too severe if she were to abstain."

"How much did she know?" he says, and her eyes slide shut, her hips pressing down against the soft fabric and rolling, searching for a hard pressure it can't find.

"Please," she tries again, slightly louder. "Get me _out_ of here."

"Hold on," he says, and her body trembles at the noise of it, at the way her hair moves over her own shoulders. She's become all sensation and want, barely able to move even if she wanted to. Her breathing comes in shallow pants, her skin flush as he approaches. "Are you all right?"

She squirms against the fabric of the ottoman, struggling to move to sitting.

"Don't move," he says.

She gives a weak laugh. "I don't think I could."

He gives an awkward chuckle, fidgeting with the loop of his belt. "Try not to move too suddenly, or it'll overwhelm you," he says, affecting as flat a tone as he can manage. "I'm going to move slowly just so that I don't startle you, okay?"

She nods.

His hands shift underneath her back and her knees, lifting her away from the ottoman slowly as she settles lightly against his chest.

She gasps, shifting in his arms with a soft groan, as he begins to move towards the door. His skin is somehow even warmer than hers, and she can feel the roughness of the pads of his fingers through her dress, hear the slight uptick in the speed of his breathing, the beat of his pulse as he examines her. It's impossible to escape from him here - the scent of him is overbearing and everywhere, and her body is already _so close_ and all she wants --

"Are you all right?" he says, and she bites down hard on her lip and tries not to moan.

"Please don't talk," she says. " _Please_."

When she looks up at him, his face is fixed forward, his gaze unwavering, jaw tight with tension. She can see the line of muscle at his neck flex and relax with his movements, the bob of his adam's apple as he swallows.

She reaches out a hand to graze against his forearm and he tenses.

"It won't be far," he says. "To the Aegis. They'll be able to help you...recover."

She looks up at him from beneath her lashes. "You could help me recover."

"Jupiter," he says.

" _Yes_..." she sighs.

"No," he says, firmly. "It's not far to the Aegis. Just...hang on."

She reaches forward, raking her nails against his skin and listening to his sharp inhale. "You could help me," she whispers.

"Jupiter, this is the Amyartal. When it wears off, you might not..."

She trembles, digging her nails into his arm as she turns towards him, nuzzling her face against his shoulder. "I want you," she says. "I don't know what it's going to take for you to believe me, but you can find out for yourself." She licks her lips and presses a soft kiss against whatever bare skin of his neck she can reach. "I want you to find out for yourself."

There's a low rumbling growl in his chest, and her body curls around the noise with a whimper. " _Your Majesty_ ," he says, his voice shaking as he tries to maintain restraint.

The radio holstered around his waist gives a staticky yelp, and he shifts her in his arms, moving at a faster clip down the hall.

"The Aegis is coming," he says. "They'll be able to help."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_\--Was that the end of the story? The girl lost in the woods?_

_No, it was only the beginning._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The dosage of Amyartal in her system is much less diluted than the strains the Aegis are familiar with, and she spends her first hour in a hospital bed, writhing as one of the medical staff tries to insert an IV.

Caine watches her from the corner, and she can hear how affected he is just by the change in his breathing, can see it in the way the tension hangs on his shoulders.

One of the male nurses leans close to fix an electrode against her neck, and she eyes Caine as she tugs the man down by the fabric of his shirt to kiss him. He falls awkwardly, his mouth barely meeting hers, teeth cutting across her bottom lip painfully, but she can't help but moan, arching her body into it -- oh, just the contact with another person, the feeling of warm skin moving against hers, the gentle pressure of a kiss being returned, is enough to make her muscles tremble.

Across the room, she can hair Caine's breathing grow thunderous and slow, can see his eyes sharp in the harsh light of the medical bay, his irises faintly glowing, as the nurse shoves her back against the bed.

The IV is connected, bags of saline hung on metal stands by her bed.

"You'll be mildly sedated," a voice says, and the room begins to grow blurry.

Her body aches.

"Caine," she says, reaching a hand out. "Where's --"

The room goes dark.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_There was a huntsman who lived in the village nearby, and he had hunted the wolf his entire life. He had been tracking it and followed it to the grandmother's house._

_\--What happened?_

_When he arrived, he saw that the wolf was lying still asleep in the bed, the stomach large with everything that he had eaten. And he knew that as much as he wanted the pelt of the beast, the wolf was not alone. How could he save them? The huntsman was running through all of the possible options and solutions in his head, and still didn't know where to begin. Until he thought of the only way..._

_\--What?_

_He would have to cut the grandmother and the girl out of the wolf's belly._

_\--_ What?

_Only by destroying the monster would the girl and her grandmother be able to live. So he took his knife and slit the wolf open._

\-- _Just like that?_

_Just like that._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When she wakes up, the room is empty, dark, and near-silent, save for the occasional beeps of the machine she's still connected to. Her head still feels gauzy, although it isn't like drinking too much vodka -- she remembers _everything_ and in sharp detail at that. The first thing she has to do is find him.

She peers down at the IV, winding the bag of fluid off of the stand and heading towards the door.

The halls of the Aegis are all cold and steel, and her bare feet feel the hard ridges of the tile acutely, the drug still working its way through her system.

She has to find him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Of course, he finds her first.

Halfway down an incorrect sect of corridor she's passed down.

Takes her hand, takes the IV bag from her hand, and gently disconnects it, tossing it in a nearby bin marked for biohazardous refuse.

 _Come on_ , he says. _I didn't think you were going to stay put._ )

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She can't tell if he's angry with her or not.

Leading her by the hand, he'd taken her back with him into his quarters -- nothing to write home about, but pretty standard for army barracks, which she guesses this must be. The cot is bare with a thin wool blanket, the room barely large enough to walk a few paces in, which she supposes must be a sign of respect given that he hasn't been stuck rooming with the other cadets in dorms of some kind.

He places a small bandage over where her IV had been connected, and says nothing, so she busies herself with looking around. Very few personal effects to speak of, save a drawing done by a then-much-younger Kiza and a small note she had written him a few months ago when she hadn't seen him.

It's the kind of room that belongs to someone who doesn't have anyone.

And he has her now.

Has had her.

(Except for all the fun ways.)

He grunts as he nods toward the end of the bed, the sheets pulled into tight, clean lines, the corners crisply pulled under, and she gingerly takes a seat on the end of the bed. He heads towards the center of the room, pulling the small collapsible sink out and adjusting the small mirror.

"How are you feeling?" he says, as he works soap between his hands into a lather, patting it along his jaw and chin.

His hands move in quick, rough gestures as he rinses them before reaching for the small razor.

"I'm all right, I guess," she says. "But what happened last night was not...anything like what I was expecting. What _was_ that?"

He drags the razor down lightly against his jaw, the hair and lather falling wetly into the sink. "Amyartal," he says. "Titus said that he explained to you what it was."

The razor rattles against the edge of the sink.

"He told me that it was like liquor," she says, as she stands and approaches him.

The razor glides down another line.

"Was he lying?"

He hums as he taps the razor against the edge of the sink. "More like he wasn't telling you the whole truth," he says.

She steps towards him, reaching for the razor. "Let me."

He inhales sharply, but doesn't move to stop her as she takes it into her hand, their fingers barely brushing. "They distill it from some of the impurities of the Regenex," he says. "And they sell it for recreational use to the higher planets and families."

"Don't move," she says, tipping his head up and carefully running the blade against the stubble along his throat. She proceeds in slow, methodical stripes, rinsing the razor off after each stroke, careful in her attempts not to nick him.

"It's kind of like the alcohol you're used to," he says, "but its effect on your brain chemistry is much different."

"When I was on it," she says, "I felt...everything."

"Depending on the purity," he says, as she tilts his face and draws the razor down another line, "it can be milder or more intense."

"Almost done," she says, rinsing the razor off. "I'm guessing I didn't get one laced with anything else?"

He shakes his head. "Only the best for the Abrasaxes," he says.

"Last one," she says, and the razor glides down along the line of his jaw. She rinses the razor off and sets it against the edge of the sink, not moving from her position. She's close enough to smell the soap he must have used to wash his face that morning. "It didn't make me do anything I didn't want to do. Or say anything I didn't want to say." She reaches for the small towel folded over the edge of the sink, running it over the water and wiping the remaining bits of lather off of his face.

He meets her gaze, his own expression a forced blankness. Neutral. "I know how it works."

She sighs, tossing the towel back against the sink. "You haven't been talking to me. You've barely even been looking at me."

He shrugs, but she can see the line of tension in his back and shoulders, drawing him rigid.

She leans up on her toes, pressing a kiss against his jaw. "You think I don't know what I want, Caine?" she says. "Trust me. Trust the things that I'm telling you."

His arms fall on either side of her, gripping at the edge of the sink as he breathes for a moment, not saying anything.

"If you talk to me, nothing's going to fall apart," she says. "You can...tell me anything."

The growl starts low in his throat, the muscles in his arms flexing taut as his hips nudge her back against the edge of the sink.

Her hand reaches up to cup his face. "Caine."

His hand meets hers in the air, pushing her hands back against the sink as his hips surge against hers, his mouth firm and demanding against her own before moving towards her jaw, her neck. His teeth glide along the edge of her skin, and she moans as his hardness shifts against her legs.

"You want to know what I was thinking?" he says, his voice rough with need. His hand has hers pinned to the sink with light force, and she pushes back against him, just to see him respond. He returns in kind, his other hand leaving the sink to anchor at her thigh, his fingers splaying wide to grip at her through her thin gown.

"Tell me," she says, and he leans down to kiss her, his lips bruising hers as his hand cups her jaw, guiding them back towards the direction of his cot.

"I couldn't stand to be in that room with you," he says, pushing her down against the bed and pulling at the strings of her gown. "To hear you making those sounds, to _see_ the way they were looking at you."

Her eyes go wide, teeth clicking with laughter as he jerks the gown free and flings it to the ground.

The room is hardly warm, but his mouth is searing and he presses kisses against every bit of bare skin he sees. Even with the trace amounts of the drug in her system, she can feel the rough sensation of his tongue as it swipes against the jut of her collarbone, the hollow of her throat. He moves quickly, his teeth scraping against her idly as he kisses down towards her breasts.

She's panting, her hips rocking lightly up against him as his mouth and hands find her breasts, tongue laving the hard bud of her nipple as the thumb of his other hand gently teases her. She sighs, raking her nails along his scalp just to hear the low noise of his answering groan.

"You don't understand," he says between kisses, his mouth pressing a trail down from her breasts along her ribcage to her stomach. "What it felt like to see you, to hear you, and know that I couldn't touch you."

"You can touch me," she pants, as his mouth glides along the contour of her hip. "You can always touch me."

Her hand scratches against him, reaching to pull at the collar of his shirt to kiss him again, savoring the taste of him as he deepens the kiss, as his tongue licks into her mouth, his thumbs digging into the divots of her hips as she settles against him.

He moves down her body with an easy speed, nudging her legs apart as he settles his body between her legs. Her hips are already canting up towards him with pure need, the room suddenly too warm for her to do anything other than pant, than to roll her hips towards him and call his name.

There's one kiss against her ankle. Then her calf. Then her thigh.

He shifts one of her legs over his shoulders, reaching to pull her further towards the edge of the bed as he leans in, his breath hot as his fingers dip against her wet cunt. She whines with need, digging her heel against his shoulderblade impatiently.

"I thought about this," he says, sinking two fingers inside of her to the knuckle, and her eyes flutter closed at the sensation, her moan loud in the small space of the room, at the sound of his voice, coarse and low, as he continues, his fingers pumping inside of her.

"Caine," she moans, as his fingers keep driving inside of her. "Caine, _please_."

She sighs and pants, her hips pressing down against the mattress as she tries to drive them deeper, as her hands reach for any kind of purchase and settle against his hair, short and prickly against her fingers.

"I thought about how you'd taste," he says, curling his fingers inside of her, and she cries out, her thighs trembling from the tension of somehow managing to keep holding her together. "The noises you would make, how you'd look, what kinds of things you would say."

He pulls his fingers free, sucking them into his mouth to lick them clean, and she whimpers.

"And when I saw you at the Abrasax mansion," he says, "I couldn't think about anything else than hearing you call for me."

"You like it when I say your name?" she asks, her voice breathy even to her own ears.

He leans in, his nose nudging at her sensitive flesh and her breath stutters. He stills, refusing to move any closer, and she feels so wound up, so sensitive, she can't wait. She needs him _now_ , his mouth, his hands, whichever part of himself he's willing to use at the moment.

His breathing is loud, but she can hear his attempt to keep his breathing steady and even, to keep control, even now, even here. "What would your Majesty like?" he says, and she shivers, reaching to pull him forward, to position his head between her thighs.

His mouth is hot, his tongue firm as it licks in flat, broad strokes against her, as it traces circles against her flesh, as his thumb dips inside of her and he presses open mouthed kisses against her heated core. She can't speak, can't even think to form words when all she can feel is the sensation of his mouth moving against her. She grips his hair between her fingers, her hips rocking against his mouth as her head knocks back against the pillow, his name caught in her mouth.

He's relentless and when his thumb dips down to rub circles against her clit, all she can do is pull at his hair. "God, Caine, _fuck_ , please," she moans, her hips rocking against his face as she comes.

He licks at her gently as she comes down from her high, her muscles still twitching slightly as she settles back into bonelessness.

"Take your clothes off," she says.

He wipes at his mouth with his hand. "Whatever your Majesty says."

He strips out of his t-shirt and pants quickly, leaving only his boxers as he climbs onto the bed to join her. His skin is warmer than hers, and she reaches for him, letting him settle his weight lightly over her, his hips nudging against hers.

He kisses her once, slow and tender, and she sighs against his mouth.

She rolls him onto his back, pressing another kiss to his mouth. "I've thought about this for so long," she says, and his chuckle is low as she moves down the length of his body, dragging his boxers down past his hips towards his ankles, where he kicks them off onto the floor.

She reaches for his length, dragging her hand over him, relishing in his harsh gasp as his hips jerk upward to meet her touch.

"Have you thought about it?"

She runs her hand along him again as she leans down, her hair brushing against his thighs as she takes him into her mouth.

He grunts, his fingers curling against the mattress as her tongue licks along the underside of his shaft.

" _Jupiter_ ," he groans, and she smiles against him, sucking gently as she dips her head down to take more of him inside of her mouth. " _Oh..."_

He pushes her off of him then, rolling on top of her as he settles his cock against her.

"Wait," she pants. "Wait, do you have a...?"

He narrows his eyes at her for a moment before understanding. "I had my last inoculation six cycles ago," he says. "Good for ten."

Her eyebrows raise. "You get shots?"

He leans forward, brushing lightly against her entrance and she suppresses a shiver. "You can pull my medical history, if you want," he says. "Computer's just down the hall."

 _"_ Shut up," she says, wrapping a leg around his.

Reaching down between them, he guides himself into her. Her head presses back against the mattress, the hollow of her neck bared to him as he pushes himself the rest of the way inside of her. He leans down, pressing a kiss against her pulse point as she digs her foot against his bare thigh, urging him to move.

His hands brace on either side of her as his hips nudge against hers, pulling out before rocking back inside of her. He's larger than most of the other men she's dated, and she doesn't know if it's the drug or just the fact that it's _Caine_ , but she can feel more of him -- her hands grip at his shoulders as he drives into her, her tongue tracing the freckles on his collarbone.

"Fuck," she grunts as he begins to speed his pace. "Caine, god, please..."

It's almost as if her body's been anticipating him for months. She can feel every callous against his fingers, every place where his body is pressed against hers, his touch burning through her inside and out.

His hands dig against her thighs as he buries his head against her shoulder, and she can hear the noise of his growl growing louder as he speeds his pace. His hips rock against hers harder and faster, and she can barely think, her breaths coming in short pants as her nails dig into the skin of his back,looking for anything to hold onto, to keep her tethered to this moment, to keep her from breaking too quickly.

"Jupiter, Jupiter, Jupiter," he murmurs, his mouth pressed against her shoulder as his hips rock against hers.

When she meets his eyes, they're nearly all dark, and she shudders at the sight.

She draws her legs higher against his body, and he pushes even deeper, his eyes sliding closed at the sensation. His fingers dig even harder into her thighs and she gasps -- _yes_ \-- as he leans down, his teeth biting at the skin of her throat as his hips drive against hers. "Caine," she gasps, "Caine, _yes_..."

And as he approaches his own climax, she can barely hear the words he mumbles against the skin of her neck, her shoulder, like a heartbeat -- _mine, mine, mine --_ as his hips keep their steady motion against her own.

She rocks against him even harder as she nears her own, her fingernails digging into the skin of his back as she gasps, her body going rigid underneath his.

"Jupiter," he says, he whispers, his hands tightening painfully on her skin to anchor himself as he drives into her.

"Caine," she whispers, and he bites at the flesh of her shoulder as he comes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She watches him sleep after.

Traces the patterns of lines tattooed into his arm, watches the way his face loses its worried lines, its usual weary look.

He shifts in his sleep, murmuring her name quietly, and she runs her hand along his hair.

He nuzzles even closer into her touch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Your people tell this story to children?" he says, halfway through her story.

She hums, nodding, her hand absentmindedly tracing shapes against the bare skin of his chest. "I think it's supposed to be there to teach the kids a lesson."

His eyebrows raise. "What kind of lesson could be learned from a story about a girl and a wolf?"

She shrugs. "You know, sticking to the path that you know. Not wandering. Not trusting the first people that come along, or believing the first things that people tell you. He lies to her a lot in this story."

His ears bristle, and she smiles.

"Have you ever heard this story?" she says. "You've been to a lot of places."

He shakes his head, folding his hands together and resting his chin against them, peering up at her. His eyelashes are long, their silhouettes fanning delicately across his cheek.

"Do you want to?"

"Yes," he says. "Tell me the story."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They spend the night cradled against each other, their bodies drawing warmth from each other even amid the cold of the ship.

In the morning, he's back to his usual demeanor of reserve, tracing the bruises left on her hips and thighs with a quiet anger.

"They're nothing," she says.

"I hurt you."

She shakes her head. "It would take a lot more than that for you to hurt me," she says. "Besides, I enjoyed it."

His eyes narrow. "Your Majesty, I -- you had to know that I wasn't in control of myself, not completely..."

"Caine," she says. " _I enjoyed it_."

"I never want to hurt you," he says.

"You didn't."

"I could have."

She shakes her head. "No," she says. "I know you. You couldn't have."

"How?" he says.

"Because you have a good heart," she says, "and I've got more than my fair share of good judgment. I know good people when I see them, and you wouldn't hurt anyone without a good reason. You wouldn't hurt me."

"I'm only a splice," he says. "You're royalty."

She shrugs. "I'm a girl who cleans toilets," she says. "That's what I am. And it doesn't matter to me if you're a splice or if you're not. That's not why I'm here."

He walks towards one of the small inlaid boxes he has against the wall, fishing something out from one of the rear pockets.

"Open your hand," he says.

"What is it?"

"A token," he says. "Of trust. Of your faith in me."

"Do I have to close my eyes?"

His chuckle is soft. "Your Majesty can do as she pleases."

She closes her eyes. "It's no fun if you spoil your own surprise," she explains as he lays something cold and metallic in her palm.

When she opens her eyes, she closes her hand around the chain - a set of dogtags.

"From my time with the Legion," he says.

"Are you sure you want me to have these?"

"Yes," he says. "They're yours."

She places the chain around her own neck, feels the weight of the tags knocking against her chest as she walks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_When the huntsman had cut the grandmother and girl free from the wolf's belly, they shoved him full of stones so that he would be unable to run when he woke up._

_\--What were they going to do with him?_

_The same thing all hunters must do with their prey._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"I want to tell my family," she says during a night spent watching the stars from atop one of Chicago's highest office buildings. The brick of the column solid and secluded enough for them to camp out for hours.

He shifts his weight onto his arm as he turns to look at her. "About what?"

She shrugs. "Everything. I think that it's time."

"What about the Abrasaxes?"

"Maybe Titus and Kalique won't let them stay on the estate, but this way I can at least make sure that I know they're being taken care of. There have to be other places, don't there?"

He hums, nodding slightly.

"I want to tell them about you, too," she says. "They deserve to meet you after everything they've heard."

His smile is small, contained. "You've told them about me?"

She leans in to kiss him, shrugging slightly. "They got it out of me."

Overhead, the stars are stretching lazily out across the sky, moving past them slowly as the time counts down towards sunrise.

"You know, my father loved the stars," she says. "Did I ever tell you that? He wanted to name me Jupiter because it was his favorite object in the sky. He thought that it was so beautiful."

Caine watches her, silent, waiting for her to continue.

"If only he knew the kinds of things that exist up there, the kinds of things that I could have shown him..."

Caine reaches for her hand, brushing his thumb across her knuckles lightly.

She shakes her head.

"What about you?" she says. "What's your story?"

He shrugs. "I don't have one."

"Everybody has one."

"I was made, Jupiter. Part of a litter. Except I was too small, too weak to be of any real use so they sold me to the only buyer they could find."

"You joined the Legion, though, didn't you?" she says. "You must have done something someone appreciated."

He shrugs. "You know most of the story."

"Listen," she says, "you found me. That's something, isn't it?"

He leans down, pressing a kiss to the tops of her knuckles. "Your Majesty," he says, and she pulls her hand free.

"I'm just Jupiter," she says. "With you."

"You're not 'just' anything," he says. "Especially not with me."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_When the wolf woke up, his stomach stitched back together with black thread, the stones inside of him were so heavy that he could not move. The girl, the grandmother, and the hunter looked at him, and laughed and laughed._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He grows quiet as he watches her, his thumb tracing lightly back and forth over the knuckles of her hand.

"What am I to you, then?" she says.

He meets her gaze, and doesn't answer.

"Do you want to know what you are to me? What I figured out?"

He doesn't answer.

"Sometimes," she says, "I think that you're the only person I've ever really loved this way."

"You're the only person," he says, after a long beat, his eyes fixed down at their hands.

She reaches for him, tilting his chin up to face her. "What?"

"You're the only person," he says. "That I've loved. That, I think, has felt for me the way you do."

"Caine," she says, with a soft laugh. "I love you."

Overhead, the stars seem to shine and blink at them, a tapestry of some other kind of code.

"All of this belongs to you," he says. "The stars, the planet, even the people --"

"People don't belong to me," she says. "They belong to themselves."

"Why did you choose me?" he says. "Out of all the other people, the other planets, the other stars?"

"You found me," she answers. "Out of all the other people, the other planets, the other stars."

"I was sent to find you."

She hums. "And you did."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She stands before her family, her aunt Nina clicking away at the knitting needles as she pores over horoscopes for the new year.

"There's something I want to tell you," she says, and Vladi doesn't even look up from switching the channels on the tv. "All of you."

"We're here," her uncle says, "so talk."

"Yes, Jupiter," her mother says. "What is it?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_tell me again the story about the wolf._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not again.

Not the same wolf.

This is the story she lives in, the story she wrote with her body, her blood.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_tell me again._

_the story._

 

 

_the wolf._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_tell me._

**Author's Note:**

> [1] The only additional name I added was the patronymic, which as far as my research led me to believe is fairly typical.
> 
> [2] 'My sunshine.'
> 
> [3] A proverb: "Falling in love is like a mouse falling into a box." [There is no way out.]
> 
> [4] Swan Lake. The narrative production detail is based on an actual production the Bolshoi does where the swans become a metaphor of the Prince's inability to decide between his royal duty and his actual desires (fate and free will), makes the wrong choice, and dies, killing his free will in the process. (It's super metaphorical and amazing and one I deeply enjoyed, so here it is.)
> 
> [5] This work is at least partially gifted to Jordan, with major thanks to Somaya (for listening and reading and hearing me whine), Alex, and all of my poor friends who've had to hear me talk endlessly about this movie for weeks.


End file.
